1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a tube in which, near at least one end of the tube, there is arranged a retractable, radially-protruding pin extending out from a hole in the tube wall adjacent the at least one end. Such a pin, so-called a drift pin, is useful for, among other uses, locking functions in a locking hinged-dustpan arrangement or in coupling and decoupling separate tubes, and so on.
2. Prior Art
Biased drift pin arrangements, including arrangements which are not inserted in tubes, are known in widely divergent fields of endeavor. Typical examples of biased drift pin arrangements not especially used in association with tubes but deployed nevertheless in various locking applications include the pair of snow shovels disclosed separately in U.S. Pat. No. 2,098,609--Bishop and U.S. Pat. No. 4,264,095--Lemasters, or the spray-nozzle support in U.S. Pat. No. 1,989,810--Kregeloh. Other examples of biased drift pin arrangements, this time inserted inside tubes, include locking hinged-dustpans as disclosed in German Patent No. 542,248--Bickenbach (Dec. 31, 1931) and in commonly-owned, commonly-invented U.S. Pat. No. 5,367,737--Vosbikian.
Despite the wide spread popularity in biased drift pin arrangements, and including particularly tube and drift pin combinations, room for improvement still exists. The present invention involves structures arranged in ways to provide advantages in which the tube and drift pin combination as a whole is made from relatively more economical materials, which are more economically formable into elaborate shapes, and are more economically assembled together to a finally-assembled biased drift-pin arrangement that is comparably functional to the prior art arrangements disclosed above but presumably much more durable and less likely to fail.